Erich Sixt, head of the Pullach, Germany-based global car rental company that bears his family's name, recently described electric cars as a "costly political error" given their still inferior range, long charging times and the huge investment necessary to expand the charging infrastructure.
It may have been a self-serving statement (renters don't like them), but he may also well be right: If a paper published June 7 correctly estimates the cost of extracting carbon dioxide from the air, regulators could do better to concentrate on that technology rather than on forcing vehicle electrification.
Carbon Engineering is a company co-founded by Harvard physicist David Keith and funded, among others, by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Since 2015, it has been running a CO2 extraction plant in Canada, testing out a technology that was until recently rejected as too costly.